Hamm Reno reduces lead times with PLM

European shoe retailer HR Group has reduced lead times, cut less profitable styles, and increased order quantity after implementing TXT's PLM software.

HR Group (Hamm Reno) is one of the largest shoe distributors in Europe with around 500 retail stores and 1,800 wholesale points of sale in 20 countries. It sells around 25m pairs of shoes, textiles and accessories a year, with brands including Tamaris and Esprit, as well as a range of own-labels such as bama, Mercedes and Sansibar, apparel and accessories.

The integration of the TXTPLM and TXTChain (Supply Chain Collaboration) solutions has, according to HR Group, enhanced the visualisation and monitoring of products and processes across the company's diverse and growing businesses.

It is being used across all divisions and departments with over 90 internal users and with a growing number of external users being added.

With TXTPLM, Hamm Reno supports the elaboration of the Collection Plan for both the retail and wholesale business, the management of styles and material master data, and the full management of technical specifications to support direct sourcing. The integration with TXTChain enables updating the collection plan with real order data.

"The TXT PLM project is another step in optimising our process to bring products to market in a predictable fashion, giving us the ability to make sure our stores and customers get the products they desire," said Felix Finger, Hamm Reno Group's executive director IT and logistics.

He added that the company is seeing better synergies between retail and wholesale departments, having reduced lead times, and to cut less profitable styles, while increasing order quantity.

"Additionally, the process improvements have resulted in better supplier integration, direct sourcing and, of course, the desire to increase margins."